Savior of humanity. Heartless monster. Visionary inventor. Animal torturer. Hero of progress. Enemy of the people. How many lives can fit into the life of a single man?
Salvatore La Porta recounts the controversial existence of Vladimir Demikhov, the father of transplant medicine: an emotional and literary portrait that is also a passionate reflection on the boundaries between science and ethics.
It’s December 3rd, 1967, when South African surgeon Christiaan Barnard performs the first human heart transplant. The event is revolutionary: finally, a part of us can survive in someone else’s body, saving their life. What almost no one knows, however, is that this crucial milestone was only made possible thanks to the research of an obscure Russian doctor who, in the basement of a Soviet institute, had for years conducted horrifying operations on dogs—thus giving birth to transplantology: Vladimir Petrovič Demichov.
This book tells his incredible story: from a youth spent working in factories to his brilliant experiments as a university fellow; from his early attempts to transplant the head of one dog onto the body of another to the eventual success of his theories; from the enthusiasm of the international press to the embarrassment and reprisals of Soviet authorities, who branded him a dangerous charlatan; and finally, to censorship, expulsion from all institutions, and damnatio memoriae—a legacy of erasure that still haunts much of his work today.
Demichov is an impossible biography, a narrative woven from lost documents and uncertain testimonies, exploring what it truly means to give everything—your health, your peace of mind, your reputation—for what you believe is right: to understand where our body ends and where we begin.